1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to communications, information management, and human organization, and more particularly to an electronic system of hierarchical documents, collectors, and rosters within a network to manage and disseminate information and communications.
2. Description of the Related Art
As computer networks have evolved into viable instruments for communicating, structuring and sharing information, various disparate information systems, such as electronic mail (email), usenet newsgroups, mailing lists, and web pages, were developed to facilitate communication and information management. Since the various systems were developed independently and for different purposes, these systems do not function collaboratively to the benefit of a user of the computer network.
Computer networks typically consists of two or more computers connected so that the two computers can communicate and share information with each other. However, most information systems can function on a single stand alone computer as well. Therefore, as used herein, computer network encompasses stand alone computers. Typically, users, normally humans but sometimes other computers, have one or more user accounts on one or more computers on the computer network. Users on a computer network can communicate and share information with each other through a variety of systems such as electronic mail, mailing lists, newsgroups, and the World Wide Web (WWW).
Electronic mail, or email, is used to communicate private messages between users on a computer network. Typically, email messages are originated by a single user but can be sent to one or more users. When a user receives an email message, the email message is placed in his email inbox and the user is notified of the incoming email message. Each user typically has only one email inbox for each user account. Therefore, all the email a user receives is placed in a single email inbox. The user must then manually sort through his email inbox to determine whether any high priority email has been received. If a user receives many incoming email messages, the user may miss important email messages.
A mailing list is a specialized use of email. Mailing lists are used to exchange information with every member of a specified group of users. The mailing list has a specific email address. Any email sent to the email address of the mailing list is forwarded to all members of the mailing list. Typically users who wish to be included on a mailing list must subscribe to the mailing list, by requesting the maintainer of the list to add the user's email address. To cancel a subscription the user must request that the maintainer of the list remove the user's email address. Subscription to mailing lists further compounds the problem of overcrowded email inboxes, since a user will receive even more email.
A common problem with mailing lists occurs when error messages bounce between the mailing list and an errant user. The bouncing error messages can cause many unwanted email messages to be sent to every member of the list. In such a situation a user may accidently delete important email messages in his attempt to remove all the unwanted error messages. Furthermore, the user can not unilaterally cancel his subscription to prevent the error messages from flooding his email inbox.
Another popular information system is the use of usenet newsgroups. A newsgroup consists of various articles sent by users from across the network. The usenet newsgroup information system was developed in an era when computers were connected temporarily at fixed intervals to exchange information. Thus to guarantee access to the newsgroups each computer had to obtain and maintain a local copy of the articles. World wide newsgroups such as those found on the internet are copied by a local news server for local area networks. A user has access to the local copy of the newsgroup on his local new server by running a news reader. Articles the user wishes to send to a particular newsgroup are eventually copied to all local news servers across the world which carry the particular newsgroup. Unlike a mailing list, the user who reads a newsgroup does not receive a personal copy of each article; rather, the user reads the copy on the local news server. Furthermore, typically the user is not notified of new articles until he uses his news reader to read the newsgroup.
A major limitation with the newsgroup system is the difficulty of creating new newsgroups. Since each article of each newsgroup must be copied to every local news server, all the news servers must be aware of a new newsgroup. The general system to create a new newsgroup is to post a proposal for the new newsgroup to any related group. Then, if users vote to approve the group, the group is promulgated across all the news servers. Typically, if only a small number of users wish to use the proposed new newsgroup, the new newsgroup will not be approved. Furthermore, if there is a similar newsgroup in existence the new newsgroup is typically not approved.
Since any user can post to a newsgroup, a newsgroup is often filled with unrelated or unimportant articles; therefore, a user is often forced to skim through many worthless articles to read the few good articles. In response to this problem, moderated newsgroups were created. A moderated newsgroup is identical to a normal newsgroup except that all articles are reviewed by the moderator of the newsgroup. If the article satisfies the criteria of the news group, the article is released to the local news servers.
Another system for exchanging information on a computer network is the World Wide Web (WWW). The WWW uses makes use of hypertext markup language (HTML) to create various HTML documents known as "web pages." Each web page has a unique address known as a uniform resource locator (URL). HTML makes use of tags to mark text in various ways, such as headings, paragraphs, lists, underlining, and bolding. HTML also includes tags for images, forms and links to other documents. A particular web page can use an HTML link to connect to other web pages.
Computers with web pages must have a web server to handle requests for the web pages. Users accessing web pages use a web browser. The web browser and the web server communicate using a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). Typically, a user will supply a URL with the address of a web page to the web browser. Then, the web browser contacts the web server containing the web page to request a copy of the web page. The web server then sends the web page to the browser, which displays the page to the user. As used herein, "displaying" an item, can include, for example, actually showing the contents of the document, showing a symbolic representation of the document, showing the title of the document, showing information about the document, or a combination thereof. If the user finds the web page valuable, the user can store the URL as a "bookmark" so that the user can easily return to the web page. A typical web page will contain links to other web pages. A user can easily instruct the web browser to retrieve the linked web pages or the user can supply another URL for another web page.
Web pages have become popular due to the ease of navigating to various web pages. Furthermore, construction of web pages is not overly complex. Even an individual user has the ability with the WWW to "publish" a page to the world on any subject the user desires. In addition, various services, such as databases of web pages and key word searching of web pages, are available.
However, the WWW has many limitations that may hinder its usefulness. For example, most web pages are updated at various intervals. However, no notification feature is available to alert users who frequent a particular web page that the web page has been updated. Therefore, a user who wishes to read the page after each update must manually request the web page at various intervals to be sure that the most recent updates are received.
Another limitation is found in current browser implementations. As mentioned above, a user can save "bookmarks" on pages he finds of interest. However, current browsers save all the "bookmarks" into one flat file. Therefore, if the user desires a hierarchical arrangement of his bookmarks he must manually edit the bookmarks in a different HTML document.
As mentioned above, the various systems for communication and information management on computer networks were designed for different purposes. Therefore, a user does not have a uniform system for communicating and sharing information. Furthermore, each system has certain limitations that prevent the systems from performing optimally for the user.
Hence there is a need for a method or system to unify and enhance or replace the current disparate systems users of computer networks employ for communication and information management on the computer network.